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25/05/2013

There’s an
interesting article
in the Review section of today’s TheWeekend
Australian, about adaptations and their prevalence in Australia’s current theatrical
landscape. Rosemary Neill asks if it is “a sign of the bankruptcy of original
ideas, or [if] it heralds a confident approach to great works of drama?”

In the past two
years in Sydney
alone, audiences have been given the opportunity to see numerous classic plays
in ‘updated’ or ‘new versions’ by various writers and directors (and
writer-directors). Productions of Ibsen’s The
Wild Duck, Gorky’s Vassa Zheleznova
(as The Business), Chekhov’s The Seagull, Seneca’s Thyestes, Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Euripedes’ Medea, and the forthcoming
interpretation of Strindberg’s Miss Julie,
have all been rewritten, adapted or reinterpreted from their original texts.
While these have resulted in many critical and popular successes, is it hinting
at a wider, more alarming problem – a dearth of ‘large-scale’ Australian works?

11/05/2013

As many a child
does, I loved mythology, and all the many intricacies of which god sired who
with whom, who did what where; all the gods, demigods and deities, heroes and
heroines running around the place felling monsters and accomplishing miraculous
feats… I don’t know if it was that I grew out of it or just stopped being
obsessed by it all, but somewhere along the line it no longer held the appeal
it once did. It’s all still in my head somewhere, all the stories about the
gods and the apples, the world tree, the goat-men and the epic wars, all
connected (like so many other things) by that wonderful red string. And then
along comes this play, Van Badham’s The
Bull, The Moon, and the Coronet of Stars at Griffin theatre; with its
adaptation of the story of the minotaur into a contemporary context, it’s a bit
like playing hide and seek in a labyrinthine museum of myth – you’re aware of
something bigger going on in the story, but at the same time, you’re trying not
to get caught up worrying about it all, because you still want to be told a story, you
still want it to work its magic on you.

Like friends or
lovers telling the story of how they met, the play’s genesis had many
beginnings (as told on the Griffin
blog in three parts). It was
originally written as a short play inspired by a shard of pottery in Oxford’s Ashmolean museum; it started life as a
double-dare between two good friends (the other half of the dare became Dance of
Death for Melbourne’s Malthouse theatre); it started as a story told
millennia ago, about a man who slew a bull, a woman who helped him find his way
out again, and a man who loved frivolity a little too much. It’s an
enchantingly beautiful play, told eloquently by Badham’s poetic language and
performed superbly by Matt Zeremes and Silvia Colloca. Something strange is
happening in the museum where Marion and Michael work. As Michael keeps guard,
a monster appears along with an impossible situation. Marion flees, only to become infuriated by
Mark, a sommelier, and have her world turn upside down as her emotions betray
her. To quote the season book, “it will lure you into an orgy of antiquity,
cupcakes and beachside frivolity [in] this delightfully debaucherous fairytale
for adults.”

01/05/2013

I’ve never been a
huge fan of Shakespeare’s History plays; they’ve always seemed a bit dull, a jumble of big speeches
and set pieces interspersed with a lot of bickering and fighting amongst political
factions. With Bell Shakespeare’s production of Henry 4,
however, that has all changed. John Bell calls it Britain’s
‘national poem,’ and you could almost extend that to Australia, I guess. From its
opening cacophony of drums and guitar, to the breaking of the set, the raucous
rabble of the taverns and the streets, the political manipulating and the
ultimate redemption at the end, I don’t think I’ve seen a Shakespeare play done
as viscerally and as hauntingly poetic since Bell Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in November 2010.

Written in two parts performed in 1596 and 1597 respectively, Henry IV was based on Holinshed’s Chronicles and an anonymous play, The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth.
Part One deals with the rebel problem
in the North, and Prince Hal’s rebellion against his duties; Hal, spurred into
action by his father’s scorn, kills Hotspur at Shrewsbury, proving himself somewhat. Part Two sees Hal fall back into his old
ways with his friends, while Falstaff is sent away to gather soldiers; upon the
illness and death of Henry IV, Hal assumes the crown and becomes Henry V,
banishing his old acquaintances. However so much the play appears to depict historical
events, “to call any of [Shakespeare’s] plays ‘histories’ is somewhat
misleading, because historical events and personages are so heavily
fictionalised,” John Bell wrote in The
Australian. “To the Elizabethans, history was a mix of myth, legend,
folklore, moralising and propaganda. Historical figures and events [illustrated]
moral treatises, patterns of behaviour, warnings of consequences and character archetypes.”